finding the courage to go gray

Well, here we are at the end of the journey. This picture was taken December 12, 2010, almost exactly two years after I cut it all off. I may let it grow. I may get it cut. Now it’s just normal hair. Looking back, the painful periods were when I was letting the roots grow and the first cut, which was so short I remember feeling colder (it was winter time). After that there were periods of awkwardness related to letting your hair grow which happen regardless of the color. Those don’t count!

For anyone else considering this, I want to offer encouragement. I have felt freed from trying to convince the world that I’m younger or more beautiful than I really am. I have received many more compliments on my gray hair than I had received in the recent past with my fake dark brown hair with red and gold highlights, which has actually been a very pleasant surprise.

I decided I really couldn’t stand the bad haircut anymore, let alone the “middle-aged-man-needing-a-reapplication-of-Grecian-Formula-look”, so I went to the yellow pages to try to find a local hair dresser. I had been going to the same hair dresser for 12 years and loved her and what she did for my hair, but we moved and she is now a 2 hour drive from my house. We completely changed our lifestyle and are now in a very rural area. Achieving the high-class, sophisticated look will be a lost cause anyway, so off I go! I found this place only eight miles away from where we live, but it didn’t even have a street number. Here is what I looked like an hour before my haircut.

Before (in the dark)

Before

Here’s what I look like now. It’s a little too short for my taste, but all the old color is gone and I’m happy about that. It’ll grow out and I’m looking forward to what I can do with it as it gets longer.

Every day is a bad hair day! It’s the cut that’s getting to me. There’s nothing I can do to make it look good but I don’t think it’s quite long enough for The Cut but it’s getting close. Maybe for Christmas?

…except one. The gray doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the bad haircut. I know that I’m looking forward to a couple of years of awkwardness and meanwhile I can’t put everything on hold while I do this crazy thing. But no matter what I do, my hair looks bad. I have a friend coming to visit next month that I haven’t seen in about 20 years. I’m going to try to get my hair cut before he comes. It will be the short, gray cut with most, if not all of the dye gone.

I have actually been toying with this for about a week, but I decided to start blogging about it today, August 20, 2008. I am working up the guts to cancel my appointment for next week for cut, color and highlights. Normally, for the last few months my hair has looked like this:

Rachel - 46 yrs old

Since we have 95% of our possessions packed, I wasn’t able to use my camera. I took these “before” pictures with my cell phone just now.

Self-portrait with cell phone - Rachel 48 yrs (almost)

They’re not the best but they show a couple of important things. One, that I’m overdue for a haircut and color and two, the very beginnings of the roots. Currently my plan is to let my hair grow until I have about 2″ of roots. I’ll get another short cut then and after that begin the process of letting it grow. I’ll update the blog with pictures, thoughts and feelings as I progress.